Snow and Ice

Here's something I've not yet run across in my study of history; how did older civilizations deal with heavy snowfalls or heavy ice on city streets?

Perhaps our resident medieval historian has a clue.

dblboggie wrote:Here's something I've not yet run across in my study of history; how did older civilizations deal with heavy snowfalls or heavy ice on city streets?

Perhaps our resident medieval historian has a clue.

They shoveled.

I read the history of the small town where I work at the Post Office. They go back to the late 1800's (with pics from 1898). They managed somehow. The country folk never got to town until winter was over. They didn't start using any form of a plow till the 1930's there (horse-driven).

Those were the days that when it was minus 20 degrees here in Minnesota and you had to take a shit.... you went to the outhouse, did your business and got back into the house. There was no reading magazines while taking a dump in those days. Your ass would be a permanent part of the toilet seat.

They didn't really need to cope because they didn't have mass transport that could grind to a halt. Most people would not have needed to leave their towns or villages to travel more than a mile or two beyond it. Further, they would have lived at or near to their place of work. Urban tradesmen of medieval Europe had shops built into their houses, the peasants who worked the land would live in a cottage tied to the land, yeoman farmers would need to go to the towns no more than a couple of times per week. Most of what you grew, bought and ate would come from the farms around your town.

The other issue is that those who did move usually walked. Horses were expensive to buy and maintain and few people owned them, carts and carriages were even more expensive. So there were limited reasons to own a mode of transport and comparatively few people needed to own a mode of transport in the first place.

Through most of the Roman period, it is a common misconception that the roads enabled mass movement of people. They did not serve that function, they were military/government routes and this is demonstrated in the relict stretches where we can see mansios (civic hotels for government officials to stay overnight while on official business). Other forms of mass movement such as rivers and canals were primarily used by traders and even then no more than a few miles at a time.

With the Greek Polis' and the Mesopotamian city states, there was even less reason to move around. Enormous cities surrounded by miles and miles of farms. The average person would not have needed to leave their home city very often, if at all.

This is true. Farms of the old days were self-sufficient. They existed to feed themselves for the most part, unlike today's farm which exist to make money.

Well, ever since there has been surplus societies farms have existed as a vital part of the market economy. It is just that until very recently (say, the 1950s), the food we produce has travelled no more than a few miles between producer to market to customer.

The_Amber_Spyglass wrote:They didn't really need to cope because they didn't have mass transport that could grind to a halt. Most people would not have needed to leave their towns or villages to travel more than a mile or two beyond it. Further, they would have lived at or near to their place of work. Urban tradesmen of medieval Europe had shops built into their houses, the peasants who worked the land would live in a cottage tied to the land, yeoman farmers would need to go to the towns no more than a couple of times per week. Most of what you grew, bought and ate would come from the farms around your town.

The other issue is that those who did move usually walked. Horses were expensive to buy and maintain and few people owned them, carts and carriages were even more expensive. So there were limited reasons to own a mode of transport and comparatively few people needed to own a mode of transport in the first place.

Through most of the Roman period, it is a common misconception that the roads enabled mass movement of people. They did not serve that function, they were military/government routes and this is demonstrated in the relict stretches where we can see mansios (civic hotels for government officials to stay overnight while on official business). Other forms of mass movement such as rivers and canals were primarily used by traders and even then no more than a few miles at a time.

With the Greek Polis' and the Mesopotamian city states, there was even less reason to move around. Enormous cities surrounded by miles and miles of farms. The average person would not have needed to leave their home city very often, if at all.

I was thinking of the movement of trade goods. All those many, many items of trade between different countries and regions. For instance, there are accounts of many port cities servicing hundreds of ships a day; and all of those goods found their way to cities all over Europe via overland routes (as well as rivers). Did they just not engage in trade during winter months?

Presuming you are taking about medieval Europe now... most items that could be produced locally were done so. Procurement was expensive so every day items were not shipped across great distance. The further to travel the more expensive it became to transport it.

dblboggie wrote:Did they just not engage in trade during winter months?

Trade was usually done along rivers so icy roads were not so much a problem.